Twenty minutes after her car slid off the road and into a snow bank on her way home from school Wednesday afternoon, Abby Young admits she started to panic.
Her car was stuck. Her phone was dead. And the few drivers who passed her whizzed by without stopping.
"I tried to shovel my car out of the snow, but I couldn't get it out," the senior at Cedar Falls High School said. "I was starting to get worried I was going to be there a very long time."
Young indeed might have spent the whole afternoon by the side of the road had a man with a familiar face not driven up and asked if she needed help. When the man got out of his car, Young thought he looked a lot like Northern Iowa basketball coach Ben Jacobson. Once she noticed his pants had a UNI basketball logo on them, she was even more certain.
A spokesman for Northern Iowa athletics confirmed Friday that Young's savior actually was Jacobson. The coach of the nation's 10th-ranked college basketball team alternated between shoveling snow away from the tires and trying to drive Young's car to freedom until he had successfully dislodged it.
It's a testament to Jacobson's character that he stopped to help Young because he's in the midst of one of the most high-profile, pressure-packed weeks of his coaching career. Northern Iowa (27-2, 16-1) hosted Evansville on Wednesday night needing a victory to set up a winner-take-all first-place showdown at Missouri Valley Conference co-leader Wichita State (26-3, 16-1) on Saturday.
Not only did Jacobson's team win Wednesday night, he also made a lifelong fan earlier in the day.
"If I could tell him one thing, it would be thanks for helping me," Young said. "It was very nice of him. I know he has a lot going on, but he took the time to come and help when he didn't have to."
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Jeff Eisenberg is the editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at daggerblog@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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